I love that I buy an iPhone and Apple doesn't allow any non-trusted binaries to run on my phone, enforces strict style guidelines (the average app just looks better on my iPhone than Android IMO), has one place where all possible apps are, maintains a distribution channels that allows all my apps to be updated easily, and builds hardware and software that is designed to work together.
I love my iPhone because Apple is such sticklers about apps, design, and creating a consistently nice user experience. The average user doesn't care about how "open" Android is. They just want something that works.
Even if you didn't want to go the walled garden approach, who could look at how Europe treats Android and come to the conclusion that Google made the right decision by being open?
Is it that you love that they don't give you the choice of restricting or not restricting installs? Or simply appreciate that app vetting and security are services you're willing to pay for. It seems more like the latter, but you're expressing more like the former.
I can see the value in the vetting service to a lot of people, but I just don't understand the idea of embracing a forced restriction on other people that you happen to like yourself.
> I can see the value in the vetting service to a lot of people, but I just don't understand the idea of embracing a forced restriction on other people that you happen to like yourself.
Here are some benefits to the one-size-fits-all policy Apple uses:
* Developers are forced to comply with Apple's rules. Otherwise companies could develop shitty apps that use private APIs to work around Apple's restrictions and then force customers to open up their devices to use it.
* Apple and every 3rd-party support person/company/family member in the world isn't forced to deal with a steady stream of "Somebody told me to change this setting and now my phone has a virus" support requests.
* People aren't misled (more than they already are) about the safety of the iOS ecosystem by a steady stream of news stories about people who changed the setting and got their phone infected.
> * Developers are forced to comply with Apple's rules. Otherwise companies could develop shitty apps that use private APIs to work around Apple's restrictions and then force customers to open up their devices to use it.
This. Apple consistently chooses to make workaround options complex for the purposes of discouraging this sort of activity.
See:
* Deprecated APIs are actually obsoleted and removed; your app won't run in the new OS version and that means people buying hardware can't run your app.
* Right click has long been a hardware feature but off by default, so that apps wouldn't build in non-standard mouse 'gestures'.
* New ITP anti-tracking features in Safari have no off switch The solution to cookie issues is to change how your app works (such that you don't use hidden cross-domain redirects/frames)
* Side loading apps onto iOS devices is not possible without a business profile or the end user having a development environment - and misused business profiles are revoked.
* The option to turn off app signatures has been removed from the UI (not always the case - Minecraft for instance used to tell users to turn app signature verification off globally to work around their lack of app signing).
* Android has a list of permissions you must grant apps in order to install them. iOS on the other hand requires the application to prompt for individual permissions (location information, microphone access, etc), requires a description of why they want that permission, and per App Store guidelines must run with (reduced) functionality should the user say no.
You have a strange interpretation of that list. Additional privacy in web views, selective privacy controls for app permissions, how exactly are those developer enhancements and not user benefits?
Apple and people who buy into the apple ecosystem believe that it's actually better, and not that it's simply what they personally prefer.
Forcing a perceived "best path" means that the path is going to be the easiest / only way for everyone to follow, and therefore can receive the most attention / most bug fixes / most thought from executives & developers / etc.
Now of course, some people will still disagree about whether that was indeed the best path, and whether it should've been forced. These people strangely never seem to become Apple executives. :)
I'm fine with the restriction, given that the App store needs to vet all the apps coming through. I have never felt there wasn't an app for what I was looking for.
You could still have app store and side channels. If you want security and Apple stamp of approval just use default app store. If you want cheaper apps, maybe from trustworthy trusted companies, install them as well.
Supporting obligatory 30% tax on any developer work makes my blood boil. If Apple model wins it will be a disaster for innovation and salaries. I will never buy or recommended Apple products for this reason. It's worth it to me a stand even if user experience is temporarily better.
The moment a consumer-ready side channel is created, a few major brands will decide that delivering their app that way is better than conforming to Apple's rules and the whole security model comes crashing down.
If it can be used by a major brand, some unscrupulous actor will gently guide my parents through whatever convoluted steps are required to enable it for their seemingly useful app loaded with badware.
We've gotten by on MacOS for a long time with relatively decent Security - everyone always assumes that allowing side-loading on iOS will be a wave of viruses and malware. Apples pretty good at securing an OS, but allowing side loading would impact their profits.
> who could look at how Europe treats Android and come to the conclusion that Google made the right decision by being open?
Google was fined on antitrust grounds. I don't see which direction to leap to make that sentence relevant to them being fined.
From the EU’s competition commissioner
> Fine of €4,34 bn to @Google for 3 types of illegal restrictions on the use of Android. In this way it has cemented the dominance of its search engine. Denying rivals a chance to innovate and compete on the merits. It’s illegal under EU antitrust rules. @Google now has to stop it
Android is free, which unequivocally is a net positive for consumers and smartphone manufacturers. Google places some terms of use to their software and suddenly they're being "anti-competitive." Had they made Android a walled garden like Apple, they wouldn't have been fined.
> Had they made Android a walled garden like Apple, they wouldn't have been fined....Android is free, which unequivocally is a net positive for consumers
It's unequivocally a positive if they play by the rules. They fell foul of Europe(who was protecting it's consumers).
Google's not a charity and made the choices they made to get to where they are. Making Android free ensured they quickly became relevant in the emerging mobile market without having to invest massive amounts in designing/making/manufacturing devices (alongside the risks), if doing Apple way. Or if they went the MS way and tried to sell a closed source OS to device manufacturers, those device manufacturers may instead have chosen a different, more polished OS from a company who had more experience/better reputation in that field.
> Google places some terms of use to their software and suddenly they're being "anti-competitive."
You can drop the scare quotes, it's not "anti-competitive", it's just anti-competitive.
> Google's not a charity and made the choices they made to get to where they are.
That's my point. They chose the option where everyone wins the most, especially themselves. The alternatives would have set the smartphone industry back several years as Google would struggle to make phones and phone manufactures would struggle to make a halfway-decent operating system. Google's policies are "anti-competitive" in the same sense that charging money for their operating system or enforcing copyright is "anti-competitive." In one case, you're forcing companies to pay for your product. In the other case, you're forcing the companies to follow a set of rules to use your product.
> phone manufactures would struggle to make a halfway-decent operating system
They'd have bought from one of the other mobile OS vendors(Symbian, MS) or made their own (Nokia w/Maemo). It could be argued that Google distributing Android for free(so as to ensure the continued dominance/inclusion of Google Search) did set the smartphone industry back. Who the hell wants to compete against free? Even more so when that "free" is coming from a XXX billion dollar company.
Which is maybe why MS gave up on mobile OS, or Symbian no longer exists or Maemo.
> you're forcing the companies to follow a set of rules to use your product
...and Europe found those rules broke the existing law.
On Android, I can install whatever I want, replace whatever I want. Hell, I can even install another App store if I wanted.
On iOS, you can't do any of that.
How is that not infinitely more anti-competitive? Somehow licensing software to other manufacturers makes you more anti-competitive then owning the entire pipeline?
I agree that IOS is way more anti-competitive. The problem is that anti-trust laws only take effect when some lawmaker defines something as a monopoly. In the android 5 billion dollar fine case, the EU used "percent of of smartphones running an OS" or more specifically, any OS that has >50% market share because the fine goes back to 2011 when android crossed the 50% threshold in the EU.
Google got caught because their OS crossed the >50% market share in 2011 (That is literally the definition for monopoly that the EU used in their fine because the fine specifically charges back to 2011).
One of those terms of use was that manufacturers couldn’t make competing phones that used non Google approved forks. How is that any better than what MS did back in the day?
Only if they're the only ones using Android. Regardless of how you want to complain about this, the fact of the matter is, they're abusing their monopoly to put additional restrictions on OEMs, which is a big no-no.
> Denying rivals a chance to innovate and compete on the merits
Apple consistently gives its apps more permissions than normal developers they get. They also reject apps that interfere with business fields they are in/eyeing.
I keep hearing this use of “private APIs” that Microsoft and Apple use and think it’s some evil plot.
This how software engineering works.
If I have a publicly released module, I define a public methods that are my interface and private methods that my interface uses.
Of course as the implementator I’m going to have “private APIs” that only I use. In the next release, I might change the entire underlying implementation get rid of private methods, etc. but still not change the public api. You as a developer shouldn’t depend on “private apis” and Apple should have no obligation not to break apps that depend on them.
To be even more blunt. There is no such thing as a “private API”. The Application Programmers Interface is the published spec that developers should use. By definition, if it’s private, it’s not an “API”.
Android isn't truly open though. Sure, the AOSP is. However, before Gingerbread there were still a lot of advantages reserved for those who entered a commercial relationship - for instance, access to the Google Apps (mail, calendar, chrome).
Post-Gingerbread, Google has put the vast majority of their development into the Google Play APIs, which are not open and are only available to partners. This means that use of things like chromecast (for instance) are restricted to apps distributed through the Play store, and handsets running partner builds of Android.
Just give us the ability to manually whitelist external developers signing keys. That way you can choose to only install apple signed apps (the current situation which would become the default of the new system) or to accept apple signed apps + selected devs applications (which is currently impossible). It already works on OSX.
All this plus-it is so much easier to have all my subscriptions for apps in one place to know who I'm paying monthly, and to able to cancel them all in one place through Apple.
I'm tired of signing up for subscriptions and going through a series of dark patterns on a zillion websites to figure out how to manage and cancel my subscriptions. The worst is when there's one click to subscribe and they make you phone in to an annoying retention specialist to cancel.
As a consumer I feel much safer recommending iPhones to friends and family. Play Store is a minefield and that scares me. But on iPhone my mom can wander around the App Store and I don't have to worry too much about her wrecking her phone because some app couldn't be trusted.
Do you really think that makes any difference? It's not like the App Store isn't full of shovel ware. I think it'd be much nicer to have an actual 3rd party curated alternative app store. Maybe one with a working search. Too bad we can't do that.
I love that I buy an iPhone and Apple doesn't allow any non-trusted binaries to run on my phone, enforces strict style guidelines (the average app just looks better on my iPhone than Android IMO), has one place where all possible apps are, maintains a distribution channels that allows all my apps to be updated easily, and builds hardware and software that is designed to work together.
I love my iPhone because Apple is such sticklers about apps, design, and creating a consistently nice user experience. The average user doesn't care about how "open" Android is. They just want something that works.
Even if you didn't want to go the walled garden approach, who could look at how Europe treats Android and come to the conclusion that Google made the right decision by being open?